The Blitz: Part 2

Chronicles of 'The Blitz' continues at Living the Every Day with a barrage of muffins and squares. If you're wondering why the focus seems to be on sweets, it's not because we're junk food junkies (quite the opposite, actually, despite appearances), it's because meats etc...don't last as long in the freezer, so they need to be done last.
The numbers for the muffins and squares won't be nearly as great as they were for the cookies - probably about 168 muffins  and about 300 squares (when they are all cut into pieces - I don't mean that  I am going to make 300 different kinds of squares!). I figured that seven types of muffins, doubled, and six types of brownies/ square, doubled, should be just about right.
This weekend consisted of orange pumpkin muffins, apple cheddar muffins, roasted garlic muffins, banana peanut butter and chocolate chip muffins, caramelized onion muffins, mint squares, mint brownies and nanaimo bars. These are now vacuum-sealed and stacked in the freezer.
They are keeping the cookies company.

Snow?

What a lovely surprise to see fuzzy crystal flakes pouring down from the sky on Saturday evening. Even better waking up on Sunday to find that the roof looked like the dusted panes of a gingerbread house.

Thankfully this particular visitor didn't stay long. Snow in mid-May isn't welcome :)

Nine Hundred Cookies - Check

Okay, so I did say approximately one thousand cookies. Does nine hundred and twenty-nine count? That's about one hundred cookies for every month, and even my husband the 'cookie monster' thinks that that's a lot of cookies.

After three hundred and sixty-eight chocolate chip cookies, sixty-seven molasses cookies, one hundred and sixteen chocolate oatmeal cookies, one hundred and forty-four oatmeal butterscotch cookies and two hundred and thirty-four triple chocolate cookies, THE BLITZ: Phase One is done. (Well, it will be in about half-an-hour when my husband has finished vacuum sealing the last batch.)
Seven more phases to go!

The Blitz: Part 1

I was a bowl of mixed emotions when I got the admittance letter to the B.Ed program. After graduating from the University of Toronto and Sheridan College I'd said to myself "okay, that's it. I'm done with school. I am not going back."

But life has a way of serving our words to us for breakfast and making us eat them.

And this time it wasn't just once, but many times over.

Growing up, I had a huge grudge against the piano, and by grudge I mean that some days I literally wanted to take my mom's cleaver and hack the offending instrument to pieces. "Mom," I complained when she made me practice two hours a day, "why do I need this? I don't ever want to be a piano teacher or anything,"

Heh, heh, heh. Fast forward twelve years and guess what I'm doing right now? In addition to writing and illustrating, teaching piano is my current occupation. I've been doing it for five years, and have discovered that I am very good at it, apparently.

Then, having been an artist for most of my life, as I got older people started saying "have you ever thought about teaching art?" To which I responded, "I don't think I could teach art. It's too subjective and..." Blah, blah, blah. Can you guess what I applied to Teacher's College for? That's right. Visual arts.

Have I learned my lesson? I hope so.

Knowing that next year will be a frantic juggling act between full-time school, work, writing (articles and manuscripts), illustrating, art, adoption stuff, gardening, making my own everything (including clothes), church callings, being a doggy mom of two and being a homemaker,and since I am the 'let's organize in advance' type, I've concocted a brilliant plan *mwah ha ha.*

Okay, well, I don't know how brilliant it is, but hey - if it helps, it'll be worth it.

My plan? Make ahead and freeze six months worth of food. And I'm talking about everything. That way, at least, at least I won't have to worry about the little gnat called, 'I have to cook something.'

So this weekend, 'The Blitz' began, and it began with cookies.

'Thorough' research on the internet (and other sources) revealed that cookie dough, when frozen, only lasts for about three months, while baked cookies can last for significantly longer. Which is probably better anyway. Who knows? Next year I may not even want to take time out of my schedule to take out a roll of dough and shape them into cookies, thereby creating two cookie pans that would have to be cleaned.

The solution? Make and freeze approximately one thousand cookies.

At this point you're probably thinking 'you're nuts. Haven't you ever heard of something called a grocery store? They sell cookies in packages and you can buy them whenever you want them!'

Yes, I am well acquainted with that fact. But hear me out. While we do get packaged cookies on occasion, I really don't want to subsist on them for nine months. And my husband is a self-declared cookie monster. He eats a ton of cookies. Cookies from the store have who knows what ingredients and preservatives in them. Cookies I make? I know exactly what's gone into them. It's a comfort.

So, over a period of three weekends, I am planning to churn out the one thousand cookies. This weekend was a good start, with three-hundred and sixty-one. There were molasses cookies, chocolate crispy cookies, and, of course, the proverbial chocolate chip cookies. 

We used the entire dining table as the cooling stand before putting them in the freezer for a short time. Today it's time to take them out and submit them to the vacuum seal. 

Let the blitz begin!